How Bitwala ripped me off

[ihucos]

In the beginning of 2013 I joined three other Founders in a company called "Bitcoinsberlin", it was registered as a "Bits & Coins Consulting UG". Verbally we where equal Founders in shares and made a Contract stating so. I just did not care about making everything official. Being the only of us four with a technical background I had a lot of work. We where trying to find out what works in this new market and hoped for it to take off. So we build a lot of prototypes, including toys4btc (erotic shop accepting Bitcoins), all4btc (automated amazon buying and manual buying everywhere for Bitcoin), bills4btc (pay your bills with Bitcoin - now Bitwalla), e4btc (electronics shop for Bitcoins) and we also did automated arbitrage proof of concepts and I worked on a non-Bitcoin related Project. Occasionally a friend of mine helped out as a Freelancer, on e4btc there where two additional remote programmers that took not part in other projects. I not only did the the technical implementation and maintenance of our products but was involved in planning the strategy of our Company. This was a testing round and we where looking for something to focus on.

In the end of 2013 I decided to quit after a replacement could be found. Regularly I complained about a too high workload and saw no steps in trying to alleviate this in any way. I also was not happy with the lack of book keeping and constant muttering of myself from the very beginning lead to no step in this direction, despite vertiginous order volumes. I remember that in the beginning of 2014 I could Show a developer our stack and he could take my place for now. In between there where details that could sound like nitpicking: The CEO left the country for months after a breakup with his girlfriend and was not responding to my emails. No communication and no customer service while taking vacations at the same time slot. No answer to the plan of meeting for new years eve during the vacation.

After I wanted to leave, I knew that there was something "fishy". A meeting mainly with the CEO in the beginning of 2014 gave me certainty. They (two of them, one watched) wanted to simply "throw me away" and where not open to any form of compensation in shares based in our oral agreement - we also talked about what if someone leaves.

I lived with one of the Co-Founders together in a shared apartment ("Wohngemeinschaft") together with two girls. What happened is that he secretly bullied and terrorised me. I suffered from bullying in school and hoped to not have to experience that again as an adult. I moved to my parents. I actually have more bad temper against the current CEO, he went even lower, but without apparently making his hands dirty. I thought we where friends and was obviously mistaken.

And there I was, living in the lumber-room ("Abstellkammer") of my parents with absolutely no money, broken hearth, broken dreams, broken faith and priorizing my overall life situation and mental health over a legal fight with my co-founders. In this point of time it still was "my" company and I did not want to hurt it. Today I curse that our original plan was successful and sometimes a little bit that Bitcoins did well (2018). I really wish I could be proud of being one of the many first Bitcoins pioneers and Co-Founding the beginning of a successful Startup, but I am not.



I would like to ask you not to use names of persons involved in this story in a way that is indexable by search engines.



There are points That I would like to mention that for me are not important in this context but could came up if the blamed company wishes to answer:

- I got 4535 Euros while working there from two of my Co-Founders, this partially covered my basic living expenses and never was seen as any kind of full compensation.

- I writtenly cursed the current CEO after the whole thing.

- There are written traces that I was offered besides more work, profit participation in "Amazon & Ebay - Shopping", it is not clear what this is supposed to mean and for me this was meaningless, I am happy to take whatever.

- Not that it matters, but I privately possessed two Bitcoins, which i happily sold at 1K each

[ihucos]

*bump*

[amishmanish]

So you basically did all the initial work and were shown the door later as there was no binding agreement. If true, this is really sad and is one of those life lessons that some people learn the hard way.
It sucks that you weren't able to catch onto the train despite being there back in 2013. That must feel heavy. But you are a coder and there is a lot still going on. The bitcoin and crypto scene is still finding its workers and its leaders. There are a lot of learning and earning opportunities right here in the forum too.

I hope you can forget the past and move to the future with zeal and happiness. Forgive but don't forget. And then move on. You are a developer so I am sure you can contribute by giving your opinion on the latest technologies coming up. Good, well-meaning opinions in crypto are hard to come by and valuable.

Its not clear as to what you want to intend from your post. You should share some links to the involved companies/ people as well as some proof to what you are trying to put across. If nothing else, at least people can learn from your experience.

Move on and keep walking brother. Good luck!

[mbarkhau]

Maybe you can help clear up the status of All4BTC. Is it now a Scam?

[johnlhy251]

All websites that anonynous owner, will turn to scam site. That is in my own opinion.

[ihucos]

@amishmanish thank you very much for an inspiring and positive post. You are right with some points.

@mbarkhau
> Maybe you can help clear up the status of All4BTC. Is it now a Scam?
That is not what I am saying, what I am saying is how the Founders and maintainers scammed and bullied me as a Co-Founder. That does not necessarily imply the the site is bad from a customer perspective.
Is that old thing still in use?



This is some stuff for "proof", there are tons of emails and i don't know what, but lets begin with this:

A simple sloppy "Contract" - saying I (the last signature) have 25 percent on the company and a listing of projects:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ywd272czj78b7nd/vertrag_2013_juli.jpg?dl=0

The official "Gruendungsurkunde" of the company with names (Not mine).
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pftmh7vdwrcipqe/gruendungsurkunde_bitcoinsberlin.pdf?dl=0

An old post confirming the belonging of company, projects and persons.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=247656.0;all

Names for the Bitwala project, registered as other company in Netherlands
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bitwala

archive.org of bills4.btc.com, showing a redirect to bitwala.com (The company was renamed and the project now runs with a different company)
http://web.archive.org/web/20141225011757/https://bitwa.la/

Crunchbase site of bitwala, showing 2.6 Million Dollars in Funding.
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bitwala

Me writing an email, the answer sloppily implies that I have valid claims but nobody ever really made any money out of anything (December 2017).
https://www.dropbox.com/s/d9v3asdhqbe5xp2/original_msg.txt?dl=0

[ihucos]

> All websites that anonynous owner, will turn to scam site. That is in my own opinion.
The owners are well known, what I am saying is that they are a***oles.

[ibininja]

I really think you had control all along. I mean you were the dev man you def can create or find ways to force them to listen to you; you coded it. I just think you should have used your plan A is all.

[ihucos]

> I really think you had control all along. I mean you were the dev man you def can create or find ways to force them to listen to you; you coded it. I just think you should have used your plan A is all.
Hahahaha, good thinking, its not like in the movies and I don't have magical abilities. As a good software developer I can't simply hack my own software and in the beginning I couldn't destroy what I have builded, and now stuff is different software-wise.

[mbarkhau]

Is that old thing still in use?

They're certainly happy to take peoples money...